People with Disabilities in India: From Commitment to Outcomes

government strategies for promoting inclusive education in many states. However, the experience
of states like TN and Gujarat offers cause for hope, with directed strategies for public/NGO
partnerships to improve coverage and quality of IE. Second, curriculum and learning materials
which are adapted to the learning needs of disabled children, both in content and format, are not
readily available in most states. This applies both to adaptation of regular curricula and to
differences in curriculum between special and regular schools. However, experience even in poor
states such as Orissa shows that through collaborations between the government and NGO sectors
gradual results are possible. In addition, there is under-coverage of teachers and administrators
who are sensitized to the rights and needs of CWD in education, and are equipped with basic
skills and access to resource personnel and materials. To date pre-service training of regular
teachers includes no familiarization with education of special needs children. While the coverage
of basic sensitization courses under SSA is growing, penetration of RCI training remains very
limited. Finally, there was until recently an ineffective system for monitoring and evaluating the
educational attendance and attainment of CWD that would help inform the development of
inclusive education strategies and allow feedback on their performance. The new tools developed
by NCERT in this respect, and training of states in their use, are a positive step, and evaluation of
their use in due course will reveal how much improvement can be achieved in this area.
Employment (Chapter 5)
25. There are a range of public programs to promote PWD employment, but their
impact has been negligible and largely confined to urban areas. This is in part due to
weaknesses in design and implementation. Broader impacts on employment outcomes for people
with disabilities will be dependent firstly on efforts to change perceptions on the productive
contribution that disabled people can make, an effort that will require engagement of the public,
private and NGO sectors.
26. Public sector employment reservations exhibit poor outcomes due to design and
implementation problems. Despite a 3 percent reservation in public employment, as of 2003,
only 10 percent of posts in public employment had been identified as “suitable” for PWD. As a
result, the share of PWD in all posts thus remains negligible, at 0.44 percent. A second feature of
the quota policy is that it applies only to three disability types – locomotor, visual and hearing -
which limits many other disabled people from accessing jobs. A final and broader question on
the policy is consistency with good international practice, which in the area of disability is
moving away from quota-based approaches. Even if the quota system is retained, there is
significant scope to improve it.
27. Private sector employment incentives for hiring disabled people are few and
piecemeal. The PWD Act makes provision for a private sector incentives policy, with a target of
5 percent of the private sector workforce being people with disabilities. However, neither GoI nor
states have introduced a general incentives policy (though there is a specific new incentive
provided for formal sector workers in the 2007/08 budget). In the late 1990s, employment of
PWD among large private firms was only 0.3 percent of their workforce. Among multinational
companies, the situation was far worse, with only 0.05 percent being PWD. However, there are a
number of private and public sector firms which have far better performance on PWD hiring, and
offer good practice examples of more inclusive workplaces.
28. A national network of special employment exchanges for disabled people exists, but
plays a negligible role in promoting their employment. Employment exchanges exist in state
capitals, but overall, the link between employment exchanges and establishments in the private
sector is weak. As a result, the job placement ratio is very low for both special and other
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